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Matt Erwin | Bevin higher ed plan shuns thinkers

In bad-mouthing the type of education that served him so well Gov. Bevin is showing how little he understands about what cutting investment in tomorrow’s thoughts leaders and innovators could mean for Kentucky’s future.

Matt Erwin | Bevin higher ed plan shuns thinkers

As the 2016 Legislative session grinds on, no issue looms so large over Frankfort as the state budget. Lawmakers, tasked with crafting a document funding Kentucky’s government, must attempt to work with a governor in Matt Bevin who seems intent on cutting not just to the bone but clean through it.

Among the various cuts to state funding no area has more to lose than the Commonwealth’s higher education system. Pleadings from the presidents of Kentucky’s largest universities about the effects of 9 percent cuts to funding seem to be falling on the governor’s deaf ears. Frequent use of terms like “draconian” and “devastating” from university leaders have done little to convince the governor against the cuts. Students and Kentucky families, already squeezed by rising tuition and crushing student loan debt, are bracing themselves for the worst.

In addressing his proposed cuts to higher education Gov. Bevin has shown specific malice toward liberal arts education. In a tone dripping with disdain Bevin repeatedly said the state should not be “subsidizing French Literature majors” and instead by focusing on STEM degrees and, apparently speaking on behalf of the entire private sector, “things people want.”

From his rhetoric and his success in business you’d think Bevin achieved his lot in life as a result of an education in a field “people want.” Perhaps his educational background was chemical engineering, biotechnology or bell construction management.

But that’s not the case. Gov. Bevin is a 1989 graduate of Washington & Lee University, a prestigious Virginia private school, where he claims to have majored in East Asian Studies. I couldn’t help but wonder if East Asian Studies is still one of the “things people want.”

So I decided to find out for myself.

I spoke with Dr. David Bello, head of the East Asian Studies program at Washington & Lee. Dr. Bello couldn’t have been clearer about the benefits of the education Bevin received as Washington & Lee and how that same education prepares current students for the 21st-century jobs that await them. The program built around liberal arts seeks to globalize student’s approach to problem solving and their understanding of the world around them.

Dr. Bello is a serious man who is clearly passionate about providing education to his students and was exceedingly upfront about what he sees as a failure by some to understand the value of a liberal arts education.

“Most of our founding fathers were the product of a liberal arts education,” Dr. Bello said. “Liberal arts people invented this country” adding later that “Jefferson was the embodiment of a liberal arts education.”

Dr. Bello is correct, of course. The men who created our nation and drafted our Constitution could not have done so without their classical education and, in a world of increasing turmoil, surely that same foundation of understanding and learning must be offered to tomorrow’s leaders.

So I’m trying to figure out why Bevin has such disdain for those who pursue a degree outside of the hard sciences and I came to a simple conclusion. Gov. Bevin does not want thinkers; Gov. Bevin wants workers.

Under Gov. Bevin, universities should be job-training programs producing individuals of use only to the economies of the here and now. This short-sided view places the value not on the ability to create, innovate or design but rather simply to produce. Universities are trade schools — albeit with nicer scenery and a basketball team.

But that’s not how we create the next generation of leaders. Our Commonwealth and nation need, perhaps more than ever, those individuals who aren’t just going to step into the positions of existing markets but create the new industries that will fuel the American economy moving forward.

And those innovators don’t just come from the hard sciences. A quick look around shows that a liberal arts education has offered a launching pad to some of our most well-known leaders of business and government. Before he founded the world’s most valuable company Steve Jobs majored in calligraphy. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina prepared herself for the world with degrees in Medieval History and Philosophy. And who knows where our commonwealth would be without the B.A. in History Sen. Mitch McConnell received from the University of Louisville in 1964.

There is real value in a liberal arts education, and in bad-mouthing the type of education that served him so well Gov. Bevin is showing how little he understands about what cutting investment in tomorrow’s thoughts leaders and innovators could mean for Kentucky’s future.

On this point, Dr. Bello did not mince words.

“The governor seems to be a hypocrite,” Dr. Bello said. “He is the product of a liberal arts education and now he wants to deprive others of one.”

You don’t need a degree in rocket science to see that Dr. Bello has a point.

Matt Erwin is a Louisville-based communications consultant. A former staffer in the Kentucky and Illinois House of Representatives, he also has been communications director and spokesman of the Kentucky Democratic Party.